Perhaps I should, first of all, have presented to you the island in general, but my enthusiasm for César Manrique made me do it the other way round!! Lanzarote is the biggest of the seven Canary Islands and it is also the one which lies most to the North. Its distance to Marocco is about 140 kilometres and nowadays capital city and economic centre is Arrecife.

On this island there is always some fresh wind from the North and Northeast and in January when we were there it was extremely mild and between 20 and 25 degrees warm. There were already quite a few bathing lovers in the sea who enjoyed themselves. In La Santa, which is quite a famous serving region we could even observe well known specialists trying to come to grips with these high waves.

Visiting the small port Calero, we could hardly believe our eyes, when we saw so many fish happily moving in the clear Atlantic water. By introducing finally a seawater desalination plant the drinking water problem seems to be solved, It is, however, true that a lot of energy is needed to produce drinking water, which signifies that fuel hast o be imported. I have read that each tourist consumes ca. 230 liter of water a day, whereas a local person only uses about 138 liter.

Pesci felici

We travelled also to Yaiza, the cleanest village in whole Spain. Despite the fact that the name derives from the original inhabitants this place was founded by the farmers emigrated from the mainland to Lanzarote during the first colonisation. In the West from Yaiza there is the very special El Golfo. It’s a spectacular bay, created by nature itself, which has so far non been developed neither for tourism nor agriculture.

Lanzarote is an island of volcanic origin. The first eruptions are prehistoric and thanks to them Cueva de los Verdes was created. Between 1730-1736 and 1824 there were again very impressive periods of eruptions, during which enormous quantities of lava flow covered the island. The National Parc of Timanfaya with its volcanos, calderas, is one of the most authentic landscapes, which protects not only plants and animal from extinction, but is a live- mineral museum, Our hiking tour in this region was an impressive adventure.

Die Salinas di Janubio liegen westlich von Yaiza und stellen die letzte Salzverarbeitung dar. In the west of Yaiza you will see the last remeining major saltworks still in use.

In the museum of the pirates (Fort of Guanapay) is very near Teguise, the former capital town of Lanzarote, we have seen the Europeans were attracted by the very valuable raw material (Orseille) archil and the slaves, which the pirates hoped to capture for the Spanish Monarchy. Jean Béthencourt undertook an expedition tot he Canary Islands for the kings Henry III of Castile. He anchored on the Papagayo beaches, got married tot he princess Teguise and convinced her father the kings to work together with him. It is, however, known that he wanted to conquer all the Canary Island. The imported priest baptized all the Guanches and became in this way slaves. The Spaniards wanted then one nation, one religion and one language in all their colonised countries!! In this museum we saw that also Sir Walter Raleigh, who was made a knight by Elisabeth I had been here. Sir Francis Drake was very renowned for pirating around the Canaries!

Also would also like to recommend you the famous weekly market in Teguise, where we tried the local vines and bought some clothes not made in China.

Lanzarote is maybe one of the most special island in the world—maybe along with Iceland. Interesting figures, the comparison of water consumption between locals and tourists. I am not sure what to think.🙂 Enjoy the warm climate!